are taking place as
noiselessly as the ordinary changes of nature. The decay of old
and injurious social and political systems is going on like the
crumbling of ruins in a desert, by the force of inherent
tendency rather than by external violence; and milder and more
benignant systems are appearing, not like those islands sprung
by volcanic shocks above the bosom of the deep, but like the
beauty of spring, or the glory of summer, by a natural and
imperceptible growth. Within the memory of many yet living there
was a very different state of things. Scarcely a month then
passed without a shock, a press and medley in human affairs that
amazed and bewildered men, and kept anxiety on the stretch. Such
was the history of Europe. Every change was a concussion; every
fear a storm; every revolution a convulsion. Not less in motion
is society now, but it is like the motion of the spheres, grand
and silent; and that silence is the emblem and the evidence of
greatness and power in the present movement of Providence in
human affairs. The once apparently random and divergent lines of
that Providence now seem to be flowing to a common point, and
terminating in one great result--the improvement and happiness
of our race. Abating much of what has been extravagantly vaunted
about the march of mind and the perfectibility of human society,
it is still visibly true that the general condition of the world
is improved and improving. Vast accessions have been made to
science; knowledge has been diffused over a wider surface, than
was ever before known; ignorance is felt to be a calamity if not
a crime; truths that were formerly contemplated only in the
closet of the sage, have become familiarized in the cottage and
the common mind; the rights of men are better defined and
understood; the power of rulers is swayed within juster limits,
and is every where abandoning its old apparatus of racks and
halters and dungeons as the means of governing immortal mind,
and is silently conceding to it its alienable prerogative of
free thought.'

* * * * *

WE have little to chronicle of _The Drama_ proper this month. _Music_,
vocal and instrumental, has kept this branch of the fine arts somewhat in
the back-ground. We have had the pleasure to see Mr. MACREADY once only at
the Park, on which occa